The Bonjour Effect

by Barlow, Julie

  3: See La visite du général De Gaulle au Québec, directed by Jean-Claude Labrecque, 35 min., 1967.

  4: See Alexandre Wolff, ed., La langue française dans le monde 2014 (Paris: Nathan, 2014).

  5: The Paris-centered worldview doesn’t mean that France was closed to outsiders. It has always been an important country of immigration. Many personalities and artists that the French regard as French were foreigners. Frédéric Chopin and Marie Curie were Polish. Picasso was Spanish. Le Corbusier was Swiss. Samuel Beckett was Irish. The singer Charles Aznavour is Armenian. The actor Yves Montand was Italian. In fact, one remarkable feature of French colonialism was that the French made their colonies part of France. African leaders like Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal and Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Ivory Coast were part of the French government in the 1950s before they became presidents of their respective countries. For more on this, see Pascal Ory, ed., Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la France (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2013).

  6: “Le ‘J’accuse’ de Finkielkraut,” interview by Alexis Lacroix, in Le Point, March 6, 2014.

  7: Read Jérôme Bodin and Pavel Govciyan, “La Francophonie, une opportunité de marché majeure,” Natixis, September 11, 2013.

  8: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, “Want to Know the Language of the Future? The Data Suggests It Could Be … French,” Forbes, March 21, 2014.

  9: This was the warning in La Francophonie et la francophilie, moteurs de croissance durable, a report by Jacques Attali presented to the president of the republic, August 2014.

  14. Economy of Speech

  1: See Christine Monin, “L’économie, nouvelle star de la télé” and “Les previsions des télé-experts pour 2014,” Le Parisien, January 24, 2014.

  2: “L’extrême défiance de la société française,” Le Monde, January 22, 2014.

  3: Claude Bébéar and Philippe d’Ornano, “Pour un Mittelstand à la française: Favoriser la transmission des entreprises,” Le Monde, October 8, 2013. This short but excellent article explains that where France really lags is in mid-size businesses. France has 4,600, less than half the number in Britain (10,000) and a bit more than a third of Germany’s (12,500). This category mostly consists of family-run businesses. France’s problem, according to the authors, is a series of regulations that complicate the transfer of family businesses.

  4: The Road to Recovery: Insights from an International Comparative Study of Business “Birth” and “Death” Rates, RSM International, July 2013. For more on this, read the excellent “Qu’est-ce qu’un écosystème entrepreneurial?” by Nicolas Colin in The Family, August 31, 2015, https://medium.com/welcome-to-thefamily/qu-est-ce-qu-un-écosystème-entrepreneurial-86e7644147f3#.pz8d8krxo.

  5: Daniel Schneidermann, “Le lynchage des cheminots,” Libération, June 23, 2014; “Pourquoi les appels à la grève ne font plus recette aujourd’hui,” Le Figaro, February 7, 2014; “Les conflits sociaux ouverts se font plus rares,” interview with Dominique Simonpoli, by Christophe Alix, in Libération, June 16, 2014.

  6: “L’extrême défiance de la société française,” Le Monde, January 22, 2014.

  7: Benoît Floc’h, “A HEC, il ‘exprimait des idées de gauche,’” Le Monde, May 5, 2012; Régis Soubrouillard, “Hollande, pur produit HEC ou Sciences-Po?,” Marianne, May 13, 2012.

  8: Jonathan Bouchet-Petersen, “Hollande defend sa ligne bec et ongle,” Libération, January 2, 2014.

  9: Even the ideas that the market can be a factor of progress or that the poor can benefit from it are anathema to orthodox French socialists. See “Le marché peut être progressiste, les pauvres doivent en profiter,” interview with Laurence Fontaine, by Anastasia Vécrin, in Libération, February 22, 2014.

  10: French history is full of stories of famous people who lost everything because they conspicuously displayed their wealth, like Jacques Cœur (c. 1395–1456), a character that Jean-Benoît discovered when he visited the city of Bourges in central France. By the time he was forty-five, Jacques Cœur had founded a trade empire throughout the Mediterranean. He had twelve ships and his own silver mine to pay people in real money. He even had a Turkish bath built in his personal castle at the center of Bourges. His motto À Vaillans coeurs riens impossible (To a valiant heart nothing is impossible) seemed particularly apt. At forty-five, he became treasurer for King Charles VII of France. He was also a natural choice for nobles who needed to borrow money from him. But in the end, too many nobles, including the king, owed him money, and he ended up being tried under a false accusation and jailed. He did not die in jail, but as a fugitive. His ordeal was indicative of the kind of risk money entailed.

  11: See interview with the tax specialist Paul Devaux, “Les conditions pour bénéficier de ces dispositifs sont souvent complexes,” Le Parisien, November 4, 2013.

  12: See Christine Kerdellant, “Mon maire, ce Ayrault?,” L’Express, October 9, 2013.

  15. Silent Labor

  1: Marck Lomazzi, “Près d’un salarié sur dix déteste son job,” Le Parisien, November 18, 2013.

  2: Average usual weekly hours worked, OECD iLibrary, www.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/data/hours-worked_lfs-hw-data-en;jsessionid=1jtbckmfchsve.x-oecd-live-01.

  3: L’effort de la collectivité nationale par niveau d’enseignement et par élève, Observatoire des inégalités sociales, April 30, 2014.

  4: See Véronique Soulié, “Les apprentis laissent béton,” Libération, September 5, 2013.

  5: See Juliette Pousson, “Les vacances prennent congé des pauvres,” Libération, August 20, 2014.

  6: Alexandre Léchenet and Jonathan Parienté, “Qui sont les salariés en France?” Le Monde.fr, December 20, 2012.

  7: For a good starting list, see the Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi, de la Formation professionnelle et du Dialogue social (Department of Work, Training, and Labor Relations), http://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/informations-pratiques,89/les-fiches-pratiques-du-droit-du,91/contrats,109/.

  8: In a very perceptive article published in the Financial Times, the journalist Simon Kuper remarked that “France’s high unemployment is, in part, a choice. Most workers here would rather remain unsackable than countenance a looser labour market that helps young people find work. The French know there’s loads wrong with France, but they have long holidays, good healthcare, early pensions, high longevity and 70 years of peace.” “France—the Way the French See It,” Financial Times, September 12, 2014.

  9: Vincent Vérier, “Quand la France importe sur son sol des salariés … français,” Le Parisien, December 2, 2013.

  10: Bruno Mazurier, “Avoir un compte, quelle galère…,” Le Parisen, April 17, 2014.

  11: “Les tarifs de santé ne sont plus maîtrisés,” interview with Brigitte Daumont, by Eric Favereau, in Libération, March 14, 2014.

  16. Boys and Girls

  1: Anne-Claire Genthialon, “La langue autour du sexe,” Libération, September 30, 2013; Vincent Montgaillard, “C’est la pro des préliminaires,” Le Parisien, July 15, 2014.

  2: Dominique Strauss-Kahn was discharged in both cases.

  3: The case of the soap opera at the Élysée Palace, in December 2013, when President François Hollande was caught by paparazzi on his way to his mistress’s apartment while his official spouse, Valérie Trierweiler, was at the Élysée Palace is yet another story. What really disappointed people was that he got caught.

  4: See letter signed by seventeen female journalists, “Nous, femmes journalistes politiques et victimes de sexisme…,” Libération, May 4, 2015.

  5: Until 2014, Marie Curie was the only woman buried in the Panthéon based on her own merit. The other two women were wives of men buried there. In 2015, two women, Resistance fighter Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthoniuz and ethnologist Germaine Tillion, entered the Panthéon.

  6: “Le pantalon n’est plus interdit pour les parisiennes,” Libération, February 4, 2013.

  7: Catherine Mallaval, “Parité et égalité sur la voie de la réalité,” Libération, July 24, 2014
.

  8: “Les pères pas emballés par un congé parental obligée,” Le Parisien, September 13, 2013.

  9: Jane Kramer, “Against Nature,” New Yorker, July 25, 2011. Elisabeth Badinter has been at odds with French feminists since 2000, when Badinter took a very principled and spirited stand against parité (positive discrimination).

  10: “Souligner ce qui construit la difference,” interview with Frédérique Matonti, by Sylvain Bourmeau, in Libération, January 31, 2014; Alain Auffray, “L’UMP s’engouffre dans la brèche sas complexe,” Libération, January 31, 2014; and V. M.-F., “Ce qui se passé dans 600 écoles,” Le Parisien, January 31, 2014.

  11: “La représentation des femmes à l’Assemblée et au Sénat,” Observatoire des inégalités, Octobre 21, 2014; “La représentation des femmes en politique au niveau local,” Observatoire des inégalités, October 21, 2014.

  12: “Une répartition déséquilibrée des professions entre les hommes et les femmes,” Observatoire des inégalités, December 11, 2014.

  13: It is a strange custom, having wives take a feminized version of their husbands’ titles. In France, it was traditionally assumed that if the husband became maire (mayor), the wife automatically became the mairesse. In a way, it’s just recognition of her status. But of course it is an achingly outdated idea about how to balance sexism: the husband gets the title and the wife shares in name and rank, but has no de facto power.

  14: Monique Biron, ed., Au féminin, guide de féminisation des titres de fonctions et des textes (Publications du Québec, 1991). For more up-to-date information, please refer to the Web site of the Quebec office of the French language: http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca.

  17. The Poetry of Politics

  1: Their position was a measure of the degree of their fervor: the Far Right was the farthest to the king’s right and the Far Left was farthest to his left.

  2: “Les 10 grands partis politiques,” Participer à la vie démocratique, http://democratie.cidem.org.

  3: Marie Guichoux and Julie Martin, “NVB Derrière le sourire … L’énigme Najat Vallaud-Belkacem,” Le Nouvel Observateur, November 6, 2014; “MV: Un entretien avec Manuel Valls,” Le Nouvel Observateur, October 23, 2014.

  4: Even though Nicolas Sarkozy rebranded the UMP as Les Républicains, in May 2015, the UMPS joke is still common among followers of the National Front.

  5: “François de Closets critique le FN … et ceux qui ont favorisé son ascension,” interview in L’Opinion, March 2, 2015.

  6: In fact, just locating the last guillotine in the mothballs turned out to be a saga. Pascale Mollard-Chenebois, “Robert Badinter envoie sa ‘vieille ennemie,’ la guillotine, au musée,” Le Point, March 12, 2010.

  7: Mark Lilla, “France on Fire,” The New York Review of Books, March 5, 2015.

  8: Hervé Le Bras, “La carte du vote FN ou la France partagée en deux,” Libération, May 28, 2014. For more background, see Hervé Le Bras and Emmanuel Todd, Le mystère français (Paris: Seuil, 2013).

  9: Sophie Fay. “Ces ‘barbares’ qui veulent débloquer la France,” Le Nouvel Observateur, October 30, 2014.

  18. Proof of Identity

  1: The latter two terms, slang deformations of the word arabe, are controversial. Les Beurs (Beurette in the feminine) was used commonly thirty years ago to designate French-born children of North African descent, but it has lost favor since a lot of North Africans have come to consider themselves berbère (Berber, meaning indigenous North African) instead. Rebeu, a more recent term, is a slang version of the same idea. But today people tend to designate themselves by their original nationality: Algérien, Tunisien, Marocain (Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan).

  2: See “Le communautarisme a-t-il gagné?,” an interview with the anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle and the demographer Michèle Tribalat, in Le Nouvel Observateur, November 27, 2014.

  3: Le Métis de la République, a documentary by Philippe Baron, Pois Chiche Films, 2013; and Pascal Ory, ed., Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la France (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2013).

  4: The original quote of Sarkozy’s speech in Dakar was: “L’homme africain n’est pas assez entré dans l’Histoire. […] Le problème de l’Afrique, c’est qu’elle vit trop le présent dans la nostalgie du paradis perdu de l’enfance. […] Dans cet imaginaire où tout recommence toujours, il n’y a de place ni pour l’aventure humaine ni pour l’idée de progress.”

  5: “Des inhibitions disparaissent, des digues tombent,” interview in Libération, November 6, 2013.

  6: Claire Gallen, “L’idée de statistiques ethniques resurgit contre l’apartheid’ des banlieues,” Le Point, March 12, 2015.

  7: Christian Rioux, “La France toujours hantée par ses banlieues,” Le Devoir, October 31, 2015.

  8: Vivien Vergnaud, “Injure raciste contre Taubira: Une peine sévère?,” le JDD.fr, July 16, 2014.

  9: While it is true that the youth living in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, particularly those with Arab names, suffer from disproportionately high unemployment, the French have their own informal custom of affirmative action. According to a number of statistics compiled by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) as well as the Ministry of the Interior, which manages immigration, France has a very high proportion of mixed marriages. While roughly 20 percent of the French are immigrés or children of immigrés, some 28 percent of unions in France are of mixed origin. For more on this, see Cedric Mathiot, “Mariages mixtes: Et si (pour une fois) Zemmour disait vrai?,” Libération, October 16, 2014.

  10: Lilla, “France on Fire.”

  11: The French Left was taken by surprise by the intensity of the protest against the gay-marriage law in 2013. One reason the protests were big is that pro-Catholic sentiment in France is on the rise. Specifically, a younger generation of Catholics are proving to be more outspoken than previous generations about their beliefs. This Catholic revival was bound to happen in a society where religion is excluded from public discourse. Alternate media like Facebook and Twitter also play a role in the growth of Catholicism by allowing for nonedited communication and self-published comments to proliferate. France’s new class of techno-savvy Catholic youth are playing a large role in raising the profile of social conservatives in France. See Marie Lemonnier, “Un papa, une maman, un curé,” Le Nouvel Observateur, May 2, 2013; and Estelle Gross, Audrey Salor, and Maël Thierry, “Les nouveaux croisés de l’ordre moral,” Le Nouvel Observateur, February 13, 2014.

  12: Christel Brigaudeau, “La leçon du professeur Peillon,” Le Parisien, September 9, 2013.

  13: Raphaël Liogier, “Ce populisme liquide qui se propage à tout l’échiquier politique,” Libération, October 14, 2013; “C’est une France maurassienne, même sans le savoir,” interview with Danielle Tartakowsky, by Ludovine de la Rochère, in Libération, February 5, 2014.

  14: Jean-François Mignot and Céline Goffette, “Non, Charlie Hebdo n’est pas obsédé par l’Islam,” Le Monde, February 25, 2015.

  Bibliography

  This bibliography lists books. Complete references to articles appear with the notes.

  André, Stéphane. Le secret des orateurs: Politique, media et entreprises. Issy-les-Moulineaux, France: Éditions Stratégies, 2002.

  Baverez, Nicolas. La France qui tombe. Paris: Éditions Perrin, 2003.

  Bayard, Pierre. Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2007.

  Biron, Monique, ed. Au féminin, guide de féminisation des titres de fonctions et des textes. Quebec: Publications du Québec, 1991.

  Bloch, Marc. Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.

  BOP Consulting, ed. World Cities Culture Report 2014. London: Mayor of London, 2014.

  Borer, Alain. De quelle amour blessée: Réflexions sur la langue française. Paris: Gallimard, 2014.

  Braconnier, Alain. Optimiste. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013.

  Cotis, Jean
-Philippe, ed. France, portrait social. Paris: Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, 2011.

  Damrosch, Leo. Tocqueville’s Discovery of America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

  Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France, preface Aurélie Filippetti. Rapport au Parlement sur l’emploi de la langue française, 2013. Paris: Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication, 2013.

  Druckerman, Pamela. Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. New York: Penguin Press, 2012.

  Dungan, Nicholas. Companions in Competitiveness: How France and the United States Can Help Each Other Succeed in the Twenty-first Century. Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Council of the United States, 2014.

  Fischler, Claude, ed. Les alimentations particulières: Mangerons-nous encore ensemble demain? Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013.

  Fischler, Claude. L’Homnivore. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob, 1993.

  Friedenthal, Richard. Letters of the Great Artists from Ghiberti to Gainsborough. London: Thames and Hudson, 1963.

  Fumaroli, Marc, ed. L’art de la conversation. Paris: Garnier, 1997.

  Fumaroli, Marc. La diplomatie de l’esprit: De Montaigne à La Fontaine. Paris: Gallimard, 2001.

  ______. Quand l’Europe parlait français. Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2001.

  ______. Trois institutions littéraires. Paris: Gallimard, 1994.